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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Amazon refreshes Kindle Fire HD with new body, $139 price tag

No surprise, of course, that the Kindle Fire HDX was the thing Amazon
really wanted to shout about from the Seattle mountaintops today. But
Jeff Bezos had another little surprise up his impeccably tailored
sleeves -- a surprise that makes the $229 HDX look downright
extravagant. A warm (if decidedly overcast) Pacific Northwest welcome to
the new Fire HD.
Well, "new" is perhaps not entirely accurate.

This Kindle shares a lot
with its predecessor, though there are some notable changes. Namely, the
body. See, if we're strictly talking form factor here, this guy is a
dead ringer for the 7-inch HDX. Inside, however, you'll find last-gen
processing power: a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and on the front, the
same old 1,280 x 800 display. Still, not too shabby for $139 -- or, to
put it in perspective, $60 less than the last version cost moments
before this post went up.

That price also gets you access to Fire OS 3.0, aka "Mojito,"
Amazon's latest sugary rum of an operating system. Naturally, some of
the new features just won't work on this hardware -- things like Mayday,
which requires a microphone for use. Like the HDX, this slate plays
nicely with those neat new Origami covers. You can pre-order one right
this second, but you'll have to hang on until October 2nd before it
actually starts shipping.Philip Palermo contributed to this report.